ArticleNeuroscience of consciousness2019
Why does the mind wander?
Article in Neuroscience of consciousness, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Not all benefits are equal: Incentives to seek reward and avoid penalty improve sustained attention in continuous performance tasks.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- The effectiveness of a proposed counseling program in reducing mental wandering and digital stress among the students of the scientific departments in Afif, Shaqra University.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Frequency and categorization of presleep fantasies.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Disentangling racing thoughts from mind wandering in adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Catching wandering minds with tapping fingers: neural and behavioral insights into task-unrelated cognition.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2022Article
- The Algorithms of Mindfulness.Science, technology & human values · 2022Article
- Neuromodulation of the mind-wandering brain state: the interaction between neuromodulatory tone, sharp wave-ripples and spontaneous thought.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
I seek an explanation for the etiology and the function of mind wandering episodes. My proposal-which I call the cognitive control proposal-is that mind wandering is a form of non-conscious guidance due to cognitive control. When the agent's current goal is deemed insufficiently rewarding, the cognitive control system initiates a search for a new, more rewarding goal. This search is the process of unintentional mind wandering. After developing the proposal, and relating it to the literature on mind wandering and on cognitive control, I discuss explanations the proposal affords, testable predictions the proposal makes, and philosophical implications the proposal has.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.